Zhone Extends Ethernet Product Line

Zhone Technologies is expanding its line of Ethernet products, now marketed under the EtherXtend name, with the introduction of new Ethernet cards for its family of MALC broadband loop carriers; two new Ethernet boxes; and support for the 802.3ah standard across its Ethernet product line, all of which is managed by the Zhone EMS.

The new products, which are shipping now, will be generally available in June.

These new additions to Zhone’s line of Ethernet solutions build on the company’s popular Network Extender Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) product, which came from Net to Net Technologies Inc. Last summer, Zhone bought Paradyne Networks Inc., which had previously acquired Net to Net. The Network Extender, which Zhone’s Vice President of Marketing David Markowitz said occupies the No. 1 market position in EFM, now is part of the Zhone EtherXtend product family along with these new offers.

EFM is an IEEE spec that was designed to make it easier and more desirable for carriers to deploy Ethernet access over existing access types. EFM doesn’t compete with SHDSL, it runs on top of it. Currently it can run across SHDSL, VDSL, numerous flavors of fiber, and Zhone is among those vendors also offering it over T1 and E1. It’s foreseeable that EFM could run over ADSL.

New Ethernet line cards that Zhone unveiled today fit into the company’s BLCs – including the MALC-319, MALC-719 and MALC-723 – to deliver close to 1,000 ports in a 7U chassis.

“We are the only broadband loop carrier that has Ethernet access in it,” said Eric Knapp, Zhone’s product manager of Ethernet products. “A lot of people are using EFM to target large businesses – with four- or eight-port line groups. That obviously is a target for EFM. But that’s a fairly narrow niche of the available customers out there that want that much bandwidth and that want to pay those kinds of premiums to get eight lines of service. So, if you are a colocated facility as a CLEC or if you’re an ILEC looking to do carrier services, you can now in single platform offer ADSL residential services, Ethernet in the First Mile access services, TDM, POTS, voice over IP, VDSL, fiber. All of these different access technologies can now be delivered over a single platform, they all can be managed consistently using a single management system, and I personally think that’s a huge benefit to a customer.”

Markowitz added that while EFM is a terrific market opportunity, Zhone also has a healthy DSL business and the company does not think EFM will replace that market, nor is it going to replace convention POTS or new development around fiber.

“We talk to a lot of carriers that want to deliver some of these new services but also have a significant investment in some of these other technologies,” said Markowitz. “Having a common platform for them is a big benefit.”

In addition to offering EFM within its BLC, Zhone today announced its products, including Network Extender, will support IEEE 802.3ah. The standard addresses copper bonding, optical specifications and OAM working over any physical link, including G.SHDSL; VDSL2; T1; E1; and fiber optics, be it PON or active Ethernet.

This means Zhone now offers two different levels of interoperability on Network Extender – 802.3ah and MLPP, or multilink point-to-point protocol, for Ethernet over T1. Knapp said a lot of carriers still offer MLPP extensively.

“It’s a competing bonding protocol to EFM, and it’s supported by legacy T1 routers that weren’t built for Ethernet,” he explained.

Markowitz said Zhone has a unique position in the Ethernet market given that it already has million of ports deployed and offers a full line of smaller platforms.

“There are two keys aspects of scalability where Zhone has an advantage, I believe,” said Knapp. “One is in the maximum number of lines we can aggregate in a certain amount of port density. But probably the more important one is the other way around, and that’s the minimum number of lines we can support. [Most competitors are] delivering EFM over four or eight ports of bonded copper, and that’s all they do. So in many cases they literally only have four- and eight-port CPE devices used back to back, in some cases they also have a small aggregation shelf. But what we found is it’s not always as cost effective to deliver four lines or eight lines of service. Your customers may not always be willing to pay the premium to give them four or eight copper pairs. We’re the only vendor that has single-line Ethernet – we have single, dual and we can go anywhere from one to 24 ports in a bonded group.”

Zhone’s smaller-scale solutions open to carriers the ability to serve small offices, small businesses and home offices, he said.

But Markowitz added the key application Zhone wants to emphasize is “the enormous number of T1 customers that are current running frame relay, ATM or private line and the enormous expense that they incur on a monthly basis for those services only to bring them in house and convert them to Ethernet, which is predominantly what’s being run in the LAN, and TDM. But the TDM piece is going away because it’s all going to IP PBXs. So now imagine replacing that with native Ethernet service that’s providing the native packet transport that these customers want at a fraction of the cost of these legacy services. I think that’s the real opportunity here.”

Knapp said only about 10 percent of businesses are reached by fiber, but that T1s are used everywhere.

“That’s where Ethernet will really take off,” he said. “One of our large customers in Alaska is using huge groups of bonded T1s to do Ethernet over T1 because they have to drive large bandwidth long distances, and there’s no fiber available.”

Zhone Technologies  www.zhone.com

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